I wish I could say that I trust Obama in this, but unfortunately, we know this man is not to be trusted. Buying time for Hamas (Iran) to organize and plan further is not in Israel's best interest. Then again, even the antichrist will broker a peace treaty with Israel (see Daniel 9:27) and her enemies one day...perhaps one day very soon.-W.E.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman conferred urgently Sunday night, Nov.
18 – Day 5 of the Gaza offensive – on how to respond to US President
Barack Obama’s insistent demand that they delay a major IDF ground
operation in the Gaza Strip.DEBKAfile’s
sources disclose that when Obama spoke to Egyptian President Mohamed
Morsi Friday, Nov. 16 - after receiving an update from Netanyahu - he
gave him a 48-hour window for talking Hamas around to a ceasefire.Not only has the Egyptian president failed in this task, his bid made
matters worse: Hamas understood the US president was leaning hard on
Israel to refrain from sending troops into the Gaza Strip and took
advantage of the respite to redouble its missile barrage on a
dozen Israeli locations in the last three days, including Tel Aviv and
Jerusalem.
Following his talks with Morsi and Netanyahu, Obama referred in Bangkok
Sunday to “the next 24, 36, 48 hours as crucial; Israel responded to
his request to send two senior envoys to Cairo – a high-ranking military
officer and an intelligence official - take part in the ceasefire
negotiations.
However, Hamas turned down all the truce proposals on the table, leaving Israel with three options:1. To delay the ground action until Wednesday although it was poised
to go forward Sunday night - even though the US president may be
expected to stand by his objections then too;
2. To go ahead and launch the ground stage of the military offensive over those objections; or
3. To conduct a series of ground sorties inside the Gaza Strip to test the ground there without delay.

debkafile reported earlier Sunday:
“We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself from
missiles landing on people’s homes and workplaces and potentially
killing civilians," said President Barack Obama Sunday, Nov. 18 in
Bangkok. "And we will continue to support Israel’s right to defend
itself.”
Speaking at a joint conference with Thai Minister Yingluck Shinawatra,
the US president said, “there is no country on earth that would tolerate
missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.” If
that can be stopped “without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza,
that’s preferable, not just for the people of Gaza. It’s preferable for
the Israelis because if Israeli troops are in Gaza they are much more at
risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded.”He went on to say after talking to would-mediators in Cairo, “if we’re
serious about wanting to resolve this situation and create a genuine
peace process, it starts with no more missiles being fired into Israel’s
territory and that then gives us the space to try and deal with these
long-standing conflicts that exist.”
“We’re going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the
next 24, 36, 48 hours, but what I’ve said to [Egyptian] President Morsi
and [Turkish] Prime Minister Erdogan is that those who champion the
cause of the Palestinians should recognize that if we see a further
escalation of the situation in Gaza than the likelihood of us getting
back on any kind of peace track that leads to a two state solution is
going to be pushed off way into the future.”
The US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro joined Defense Minister Ehud
Barak on a visit to an Iron Dome battery Sunday shortly before he flies
out to brief the White House on the Gaza crisis.
Barak thanked President Obama and all those Americans who past and
present contributed to the financing and development of the Iron Dome
missile interception system. This defensive weapon has intercepted a
total of 300 incoming Palestinian missiles, nearly 90 percent of the
rockets threatening Israeli towns, he said. Its performance “made it
possible for us to prepare the next stages of Operation Pillar of Cloud
which may be even tougher. There is no better symbol of the close
US-Israeli military cooperation. debkafile reported
earlier Sunday: Israeli air and naval forces launched heavy assaults
in Gaza before dawn Sunday, Nov. 18 – Day 5 of the IDF’s Gaza operation -
after daylong bargaining Saturday among Washington, Jerusalem, Cairo
and Gaza, failed to produce an Israel-Hamas truce accord. When Egyptian
and Turkish middlemen suggested a ceasefire was close, Israel accused
them of pushing Hamas’s terms which were fashioned to present the
Palestinian radicals as the victor in the contest. The trio leading the
Israeli war, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud
Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, countered by intensifying
the IDF’s Gaza offensive – though not as yet sending ground troops in.
A Western source said it would take some days to determine if a ceasefire was feasible.
Egyptian intelligence meanwhile smuggled Hamas Prime Minister Islmail
Haniyeh out of Gaza and over to El Arish in northern Sinai in the convoy
of visiting Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafiq Abdessalem when he departed
Gaza Saturday, debkafile reports.
Friday night, Israel bombers struck government headquarters in Gaza City.
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi decided that Haniyeh must be
continuously available at the end of a phone to lead the Hamas side in
the ceasefire negotiations. This was not possible so long as the Hamas
prime minister remained in Gaza. All of Hamas leaders have gone to
ground for fear of targeted assassination by Israel. They have switched
off their phones and electronic communications to avoid giving away
their locations to Israeli surveillance. Haniyeh was even afraid to
communicate with Cairo through the Egyptian military mission in Gaza.
In these circumstances, Morsi and Erdogan’s were prevented from get
their ceasefire mediation bid off the ground. Moving Haniyeh to El Arish
put a Hamas negotiator in place to lead the give-and-take for a truce.
Our sources have not discovered if he is still there or has moved back
to Gaza.
The Turkish prime minister brought a secret passenger in the plane
bringing him to Cairo Saturday. He is Saleh Aruri, formerly of the Hamas
military wing. Aruri had spent 15 years in an Israeli prison for
terrorism and murder until he was released on Oct. 18, 2011 in the
prisoner exchange for the Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit on condition he
went into exile.
Turkey granted him asylum and its intelligence agency MIT gave him free
rein to set up an operational command in Istanbul for Hamas terrorist
networks on the West Bank.
On arrival in Cairo, the Turkish prime minister put Aruri in charge of the contacts with Haniyeh.
At a news conference in Cairo Saturday night, the Egyptian president
and Turkish prime minister reported “some indications that there could
be a ceasefire soon” although “there were still no guarantees.”
The guarantees issue has become a pivotal bargaining point.
Israel, backed by the United States, insists that a ceasefire be signed
between the US, Egypt, Turkey and Israel, and exclude Hamas, which
would be bound by a separate agreement with Cairo.
Netanyahu, Barak and Lieberman are asking the United States to act as
guarantor for a ceasefire. Erdogan has countered by inviting Russian
President Vladimir Putin to join US President Barack Obama as victor.
Hamas has rejected all of Israel's terms.
During the night, Israel denied reports circulating in Cairo that an
Israeli negotiator was heading for the Egyptian capital to get down to
the specifics of an emerging truce deal. The three Israeli war leaders
decided not to fall into the trap laid by Morsi and Erdogan. Instead,
they told the IDF to press ahead with the operation until its objectives
were attained – hence the launching of a fresh air and sea assault
before daybreak Sunday.
OC Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Tal Rousso defined those objectives to
reporters Saturday night as “eliminating the war arsenals of Hamas and
terrorist organizations and restoring peace and normality to the
population of southern Israel.”
The ground operation is meanwhile delayed, in accordance with
Netanyahu’s promise to President Obama in their conversation early
Saturday, that a full-scale ground invasion would not go forward so long
as there was a chance of a ceasefire - unless there was escalation from
Hamas or a strike that caused significant casualties.
A western source in Cairo familiar with the truce negotiations reported
that Obama has not yet decided whether he wants to be directly involved
in any ceasefire deal, which in any case has not reached the concluding
stage. “The cake dough is still being kneaded and not yet ready to for
the oven,” he said.